TRIUMF is powering scientific discoveries with emerging talent
By: Krista Henry (she/her)
For almost 50 years, TRIUMF has utilized the talent of co-op students to help drive scientific discoveries.
TRIUMF is a particle accelerator centre that aims to hire 150 students this year to help advance research in science, medicine and industry. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, TRIUMF is a hub of multidisciplinary researchers, engineers, technicians and students. Together, they work to solve science’s most challenging problems.
Dr. Marcello Pavan
“TRIUMF is a burgeoning science scene. Scientists and students across Canada come to do their research,” says Dr. Marcello Pavan, student program director at TRIUMF. “It is a platform for them to be at the nexus of innovations.”
TRIUMF focuses on research in particle physics, life sciences, nuclear physics and molecular and materials science. The organization also tests computer hardware and superconductors used for technological developments.
To do this work, they rely on co-op students from across Canada and around the world. The second highest number of co-op students come from the University of Waterloo.
Right now, students represent about 15% of our laboratory and are working on developing radioisotopes for medicine, nuclear physics experiments, building detectors and doing machine learning code for running parts of the facility.
TRIUMF hires students from across many disciplines including Physics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, Science and Business, Medicinal Chemistry and more.
It’s a very competitive environment and the students we hire are outstanding, contributing to almost every area of the work we do.
Providing meaningful work results in big wins
Many students at TRIUMF have published research papers based on their work and had the opportunity to attend industry conferences.
Over the years, co-op students have developed, designed and built various systems used in the lab.
“Just this year we had one female Waterloo student that created a machine learning algorithm to help tune one of our beams,” says Dr. Pavan.
“Before, it would take hours for operators to do it manually. Now her algorithm does it in minutes saving huge amounts of time.”
Students are essential to the research, engineering and technology initiatives at TRIUMF. Waterloo co-op students work in roles such as deep learning research assistant, innovations commercialization intern, data analyst research intern, junior machine learning architect, supercontinuum laser developer and more.
Recently, TRIUMF began hiring students for administrative areas including assisting with finance, operations, event planning and health and safety.
Students are enthusiastic, with new fresh ideas from what they’re learning at school. We don’t always know the latest in tech with programming, machine learning and genetic algorithms. We’ve had students that do high-level applications using interesting computing techniques that we use to help solve our problems. These students are driven and work well in teams.
A large part of TRIUMF’s work focuses on discovery-type science. Students work to help find new patterns and correlations as well as form hypotheses from the data gathered.
Students also assist with practical applications at TRIUMF including developing PET scanners and radiotracers used to create an image of the location of cancer or other diseases in humans.
TRIUMF has a team dedicated to particle physics, the study of fundamental particles and forces.
The team, which includes students, played a critical role in developing the ATLAS detector for the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
The molecular and materials science team conducts research on warm superconductors which have the potential to transform long-distance electrical power distribution.
Students often return to TRIUMF for multiple work terms in different roles on the same team or another area of research.
